The Scariest Thing I’ve Seen All Year!
…No Action Planning!
In the spirit of Halloween – I had to share this with you as the scariest thing I’ve experienced this year. A learning and development program with no action planning! I was horrified to say the least – Emma with a pumpkin face grimace for sure.
If you don’t include action planning in a learning journey, you won’t have a chance at learning transfer. You won’t facilitate change. People will leave the learning event feeling motivated and excited, but with no structured, visible goals in place in their individual context, the excitement will soon be forgotten and they will slip back into the same old patterns.
It’s always a dilemma – rich conversation was happening in the room, we were learning, enjoying sharing ideas and hearing from an amazing researcher. But, did we actively make a decision and commit pen to paper or keystrokes to an iPad? No.
People are often cynical about the power of action plans and perhaps for good reason. Seemingly cosmetic, they are often used as a tick box exercise. But action planning is the first essential step in any learning transfer methodology.
What happens next ensures whether the plan amounts to action, yet the tragedy of people having had such low outcomes from action planning in the past had led to it all to frequently being dropped or compromised as an essential part of the process.
I would propose bringing the action plan to fruition through a series of specific, structured, and accountable follow up one-on-one learning transfer conversations – with a professional, your manager, a buddy or even just yourself.
After investing time in learning you owe it to yourself to commit to a plan and create a result.
I sat in the Irish pub at Dallas Fort Worth Airport after my learning experience, action planning away and creating my commitments for next steps, thoroughly enjoying myself.
Allowing 30-45 minutes for action planning should be sufficient. The more reflection has happened throughout the training, the less time is needed to consolidate and create a plan with commitments. Everyone in the room must have enough time to really engage with the process, so the creation of the action plan needs to happen towards the end of the training program, but not at the very end of it. Too near the end and people are out the door, mentally if not physically.
There needs to be a clear distinction between the training event and the creation of the action plan so that participants can fully appreciate that it does not signify the end of the training but the beginning of the next stage of the training process – learning transfer, creating an outcome from the learning and bringing some wins.
For successful action planning, we recommend the following elements:
- Targets – what are they going to implement from the program
- What success looks like for them
- Calibration – where they consider themselves right now in relation to the target
- Why the target is important for them – it’s the why that keeps people moving forward more than the goal
- Their chosen next steps to achieve the target.
Action planning done well can be the key tool in ensuring new knowledge and skills are transferred into the workplace and drive real life performance improvement.
To avoid a fright night experience at the end of your program download a sample Turning Learning into Action™ action plan here.